Why is this Aboriginal winter landscape not what it seems?

Cross told the BBC that Curtis saw his mission as “documenting what he believed to be a ‘dying race’”. She says he extracted from his photographs “signs of modernity” such as clocks, serving the illusion that Aboriginal people remained suspended in time, living only in the past. She says that Curtis, by perpetuating the myth of the “vanishing Indian”, erased the “truth” that Aboriginal people “adapted to new technologies over time”.

In contrast, Red Crow, by making itself the central subject of each season of photography, emphasizes the continued survival and existence of all indigenous people, Cross says. “By wearing her tribal emblem, she says, ‘We are here, and we are not going anywhere. “What she is wearing is not a costume, it is not a stereotype, it is a part of history that connects to her ancestors and her culture, and will continue to do so in the future.”

However, Red Star considers Curtis and his relationship with the indigenous people to be complex. “His ability to portray different communities came through his translators, who were tribal people themselves… and he had an Alexander Upshaw from my community… so, when I look at Curtis’s pictures now, I think of Upshaw,” she says.

For Red Star, satire is a tool. Her multimedia works combine photography, collage, sculpture and historical artifacts. She appears in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among other institutions, and in 2024 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.